Students collect and analyze temperature data to explore what governs how much energy is reflected. 

In this activity, students explore the Urban Heat Island Effect phenomenon by collecting temperatures of different materials with respect to their locations.  

This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.

In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.

To investigate the different rates of heating and cooling of certain materials on earth in order to understand the heating dynamics that take place in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.

Conduct this modified EO Kids mini-lesson with your students to explore the phenomenon of Urban Heat Island Effect.

This activity is one of a series in the collection, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change activities. 

Examine (daytime) surface temperature and solar radiation received at locations found near similar latitudes using NASA Data.